Two very different approaches to student computing

Dell announced a new budget configuration for its Latitude 10 tablet at CES this week, along with the Dell Wyse Project Ophelia zero client, giving two very different options for improving student computing access, says Christopher Dawson for ZDNet Education. Although CES is mostly about consumers (hence the name), Dell announced a couple of new products with serious implications for schools. Andrew Nusca has already covered Project Ophelia, a zero-client on a stick product from their recently acquisition of Wyse. Yesterday, the company also announced a new budget configuration for their Latitude 10 tablet, called Latitude Essentials. While neither of these products is meant to be exclusive to the education market, both have the potential to either significantly advance or redefine 1:1. My first impression of the Latitude 10 was that, while it wasn’t cheap, its form factor, features, flexibility, and, most importantly, use of full x86-based Windows 8 Pro (unlike the Surface which used the fairly hobbled Windows RT), would make the tablet an ideal fit for schools where it could easily be dropped into the ubiquitous Windows infrastructure…